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OPINION

State should reinvest in county corrections programs

One risk of success is being taken for granted. That’s a danger the Legislature must guard against as it prepares its corrections budget for the next two years. Oregon has saved hundreds of millions of dollars by halting a once-inexorable rise in its prison population, but now may starve counties of the money they need to support the programs that made success possible.

The county programs — Sponsors in Lane County is an example — lost their leading advocate when Gov. John Kitzhaber resigned amid allegations of influence peddling by his fiancee, Cylvia Hayes. As Kitzhaber began his third term four years ago, he looked at projections of state inmate populations and saw that the rising cost of building and running prisons was consuming an ever-larger portion of the budget, squeezing spending for schools, health care and other programs, including public safety.

Kitzhaber appointed a task force to examine the problem, and the result was House Bill 3194, approved by the 2013 Legislature. The most controversial elements of the bill, then and now, allowed shorter prison sentences or early releases for some inmates. The farthest-reaching provisions of HB 3194, however, paid for county efforts to combat recidivism and divert inmates into local programs that act as alternatives to prison.

It’s working. Before HB 3194, the state inmate population was projected to grow by 1,000 inmates over a four-year period, triggering the re-opening of a prison in Madras in 2014 and the opening of a new prison in Junction City in 2017. Instead, inmate populations have leveled off and are projected to decline slightly over the next few years. Oregon has avoided an estimated $600 million in additional corrections costs over a 10-year period, with half of that going to build prisons and half to operate them.

The state has pocketed the construction savings, but HB 3194 envisioned that the money from savings in operations would be funneled to the counties to pay for alternatives to prison incarceration and to break the cycle of crime that keeps some inmates returning to prison time and again. The bill also dedicates 10 percent of the county funds to services for crime victims and, in a particularly far-sighted stroke, pays for scientific studies of which programs actually work.

Kitzhaber’s proposed budget for 2015-17 included $58 million for these programs. The co-chairmen of the Legislature’s Joint Ways and Means Committee, however, initially proposed a $20 million appropriation, which would knock the legs out from under county efforts to reduce prison populations. The co-chairmen have backed away from that draconian figure, but still haven’t agreed to full funding. Gov. Kate Brown, perhaps because she was not a part of the process that produced HB 3194 and does not appreciate the magnitude of the costs it has avoided, hasn’t stepped forward to fight for full funding.

Lane County would suffer a double blow if HB 3194 funds were reduced. The 2013 legislation built upon a concept the Legislature embraced nearly 20 years earlier when it approved Senate Bill 1145, the Community Corrections Act. The act made the counties responsible for incarceration of inmates serving relatively short sentences, and gave them the money to pay for jail cells and alternative programs like those expanded by HB 3194.

Each county’s share of Community Corrections Act funds is determined by its number of criminal prosecutions. Lane County, to a greater extent than Oregon’s other populous counties, has chronic budget problems, one consequence of which is an underfunded district attorney’s office. Lane County received 10.4 percent of statewide Community Corrections Act funds in 2005-07, but its share is now projected to be 8.3 percent — not because of a decline in crime, but because of a lack of prosecutorial capacity. A reduction in HB 3194 funds would worsen that negative feedback loop.

Lane County’s special circumstances may win sympathy in Salem, but it is the statewide effects that should spur legislative action. If the Legislature abrogates the HB 3194 bargain with the counties and the counties scale back programs that are diverting inmates away from the state prison system, Oregon will find itself back on the trajectory it so recently escaped. Prison populations would resume their rise, new prisons would be needed and the corrections budget would crowd out other state programs — including other public-safety programs.

A reach for immediate savings threatens to result in much larger medium- and long-term costs. Brown and the Legislature should support the counties’ effective and less expensive alternatives to prison and reaffirm the state’s commitment to HB 3194.

— The Register-Guard, Eugene, May 17

Bring self-serve gas to rural Oregon

People living in remote areas of Oregon or traveling through them will get a break in finding gas available if the State Senate follows the lead of the Legislature’s House of Representatives.

The Oregon House unanimously approved a bill that would legalize self-service gas “stations,” which actually amounts to a pump available for use on a self-pay basis when no attendants are at the station, say in the middle of the night. It was common sense to do so and the State Senate should approve it, too, and send it on to Gov. Kate Brown. It would apply to counties with less than 40,000 population, such as Lake County (population 7,838, but not in Klamath County (population 64,455).

There are a lot of wide open spaces in Eastern Oregon. People can find themselves in trouble if not familiar with how unlikely it is for that dot 50 or 60 miles down the thin blue line on the road map to have a gas station open after 7 p.m. or, in many cases, any other time.

We doubt if the move is a significant step toward self-service gasoline in Oregon, though, and that’s too bad. We’re in favor of any way, including self-service, to sell gasoline that is safe and makes it readily available to those who need it, including those who are physically limited.

Not only would this bill benefit people passing through isolated areas, it would help farmers and ranchers and others living there even more. The State Senate should approve it.